


You Will Die Tonight And God Above Have You Earned It

by KIBITZER



Category: RWBY
Genre: Gen, RWBYQuest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 07:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14848380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KIBITZER/pseuds/KIBITZER
Summary: Your name is Glynda Goodwitch, and you are going to die.(Set during the buildup to and immediate aftermath of RWBYQuest #0101)





	You Will Die Tonight And God Above Have You Earned It

**Author's Note:**

> Wait, I guess since I drew RWBYQuest, this is official content? (thinking emoji)

There is a certain peace in a death-march. The world seems so still. Holding its breath. Even colors and light withdraw, shy from the tension, until the world seems washed down to its bare essentials before your eyes. Sharpened. Fat trimmed from your senses. You see nothing but the path in front of you, each stage direction in your mind outlined in sharp angles.

Your name is Glynda Goodwitch, and you are going to die.

It isn't in the sense that you are presently dying; not physically, anyway. It is the verb of taking action. You are going to take death, seizing it between both of your hands, and you will feast on it. You are going to consume it wholly, every black-blooded shred of it, and it will kill you. You are going to die, with relish, with glory. And only then will your bereaved soul rest; canonized by a sacrifice the future may call noble (if there is a future) and the present will call justice (if such a thing exists).

You are going, one foot before the other, down the long corridor. There is blood smeared across the floor, drawn on the walls, speckled on the ceiling. Some, yours. Your shoulder throbs in acknowledgment. The bandages wound around your wound constrict your body like prison shackles. Knowing that someone attempted to care for you is poison in your gut now.

You aren't alone. Picking their way down the hallway is an entire party. Most are students. Your students.

Ruby Rose looks like a ghost, haunted by the irrationalities that pull her personality apart. It is the stress, and you would comfort her, but you know few words that can salvage what she is becoming. Lie Ren is a silent husk, and you suspect he will turn sooner than you find comforting. Velvet Scarlatina, playing a part above her station until now, relieved to find you relieving her of the duty. Blake Belladonna looks forlorn in the crowd, lonely as the day they enrolled. There is a warped mirror entity of Yang Xiao Long, whose name escapes you but whose nickname is simply 3D, and her attempts at keeping it together are lackluster at best.

There is also one of them. One of him.

And he is breaking.

You've seen the cracks in his skull and you've guessed what it means. You are on edge watching him. You are on edge when he touches you. You are on edge when he speaks. You know something horrible will happen. You know Ozpin’s work too intimately to relax.

You have been on edge for a very long time; even before the outbreak, before death, before darkness.

You all shot something to death here, in the hallway outside second-year history classrooms. You all pick your ways over the body without a word. Your shoulder hurts; your Aura is too precious to heal it fully. You need it. Your skin crawls and your gaze wavers but you see the thorns from his head and you just know.

Your shoulder is functional. Not healed. You've spent as much as you can spare on it, to make the joint operable again, to stem the bleeding; but you cannot afford to fully mend it.

The first classroom is a post-massacre bloodbath. You do not linger.

The second classroom is the queen’s chambers, and to be quite honest and quite frank, you barely listen. The corpse outside was protecting this room, you understand that much, but while the children have a dog in this fight, your interests are fully boxed into one claustrophobic head. His eggshell is cracking visibly now, splintering by the minute. The queen has noticed as well. She taunts and jeers one minute, and mourns as if for a friend the next. Indeed, she taunts even you—but you understand this world too well to be fazed by it. If not for her, you might be styled this universe’s queen. You see the fabric of the new reality, and you grasp its strands of logic between your fingers. You know: he is King, and you may as well be its queen.

You are going to die, in marvelous regicide, in a cascade of delight and blood and wine. You are a prophylactic sacrifice; you are a forced-move blunder; you are a queen draped in viscera and salt.

There is fire. There are voices. The Queen fears her own demise and yet meets it head-on. You see your reflection in the hellfire, crowned by malice and cloaked in rot. You see yourself in her death. Beacon will not have a queen. The place rejects the notion. It has no masters. Its towers will stand empty.

Weiss Schnee is gouged dark and bloody but she is alive. You, however, are spreading yourself too thin. Can't keep up with it all. Won't. You realize that you are refusing to. You have become a spectator of your own play. Your senses are trimmed to the absolute bare skeleton of your craft. You do not even fully hear the students’ conversation. Your head is heavy and thick with death. It's rife in the air. You know: time is up. The hunt must begin.

It sounds like ice-sheets breaking. Like wood splintering. It sounds like a mighty cleft has run itself through the world itself, determined to tear earth from earth, roots asunder, brick from mortar.

In order to be born, the chick must first destroy its egg.

The new regent wears an old familiar face, but it isn’t Ozpin. You know it could never be. Well—even if he was, he would still be a monster. So you suppose it doesn’t matter. Your blood is roaring for his. His ring is a vice trap around your finger. His memory is acid on your tongue.

Ruby shoots. He’s too fast for an untrained eye to follow but you watch every move. He can bat away a bullet; you will simply have to be faster.

It’s scratching that itch inside you. You feel the urge to fight to the death. To fight for your death. Your palms are tingling with it. Aura and sweat alternating in waves along your body. Shaking with the impulse to hunt and kill and die. You don’t even know his name. You don’t even know which of you is the hunter.

If you are afraid, it doesn't show. Your stage fright evaporates as soon as the spotlight hits your face. You take center stage and stage despair.

They're all gone when you turn once more. You look behind for a long moment. Long enough for him to strike.

He does not.

Your name is Glynda Goodwitch and you have loved a coward.

“Sacrificing yourself for your students. How noble. Exactly how a teacher should act.” He is languid as a big wildcat, loping towards you, gangly limbs all thorn and black-burned. You read each twitch of muscle like a scale of notes. Bars of music in his restless body.

You compel your vocal chords to join in the symphony. “No.”

His entire being is motion. He does not stand still. Even as he waits, he is moving. He has a million fidgets and a restless gaze and even if he stood still the blood would still be running new rivers down his face.

“No,” you say again. “No, this is not brave or noble. This is not heroic, nor martyrdom. This is my duty; carrying out my sentence.”

There is a line between restlessness and impatience and he was about to cross, but now, actually comes back from it. He looks warm for a moment. Tempered and fond and humored.

“So theatrical,” he says. “That's my Glynda.”

“Cut the shit. We both know how this ends.”

He looks as if he's been struck. You can't wait to strike him. He has the most disgusting way of looking at you. It’s new and unexpected and it feels like pity. He looks at you how Ozpin would never think to look at you. How King was afraid to look at you. He looks at you with pity and remorse and it is vile.

“Don’t make it easy,” you say. “You don’t give me mercy. You will regret it. One way or another, my journey ends here.”

He still dares look at you with pity. You do not deserve pity.

You will die tonight, and God above have you earned it.


End file.
